Stuff

The worst thing you can do in analysing polls of voting intention is to get excited at polls that show something exciting and different and ignore those that show the same old pattern. Occassionally the unusual poll will herald a genuine movement in public opinion – after all, whenever there is a change, one poll has to pick it up first. More often than not, the unusual poll will turn out to be a freak result, the product of unusual sampling or methods. If there is genuinely a change in public opinion, other polls will pick it up sooner or later, so it’s always wise to withhold your judgement.

Today we have one of those unusual polls, and we have the overexcitement you’d expect. ICM’s monthly poll in the Guardian has topline figures of CON 39%(+3), LAB 33%(-2), LDEM 8%(nc), UKIP 7%(-2), GRN 7%(+3) (tabs). This is pretty odd all round – a storming six point lead for the Tories, up on thirty-nine percent; the Greens and UKIP equal on seven percent.

In the Guardian’s write up they are rightly dubious, and include a welcome caveat from ICM’s Martin Boon about the inevitability of random variation and the sample perhaps being a touch too Tory. I’ll just leave it with the usual caveats – it’s one poll, and an odd looking one at that. Sure, it could be the start of some Tory surge, but if it is we will see it echoed in other polls today…and luckily enough we have at least three of them.

Populus this morning had topline figures of CON 33%, LAB 33%, LDEM 8%, UKIP 15%, GRN 5% (tabs). The Conservatives are up two points (possibly helped by an update in weighting targets), but no big tory lead.

Still to come are the weekly Ashcroft poll and the daily YouGov poll. Come the end of the day, the way to judge where we are is too look at all them as a whole – not fixate on the unusual one.

UPDATE: Lord Ashcroft’s weekly poll has topline figures of CON 33%(-3), LAB 33%(-1), LDEM 9%(+3), UKIP 13%(+3), GRN 6%(-1). Changes are from a fortnight ago – Ashcroft took a week off to avoid bank holiday fieldwork. As with today’s Populus poll, there is nothing here to support the big Tory lead in the ICM poll. Full details are on Lord Ashcroft’s website here.

UPDATE2: Finally the daily YouGov poll for the Sun has topline figures of CON 33%, LAB 34%, LD 8%, UKIP 13%, GRN 6% – a one point Labour lead. Putting all four polls together that ICM poll looks very much like an outlier. Such things are an unavoidable part of polling – and well done to Guardian for reporting it in a heavily caveated way within the context of other polls showing no movement, rather than getting all excited about it.

ICM always very low on UKIP. No real evidence to tell us whether phone polls understate them or online overstate. European election polls had the online overstating them a tad but not enough phone polls to judge them.

what I find very odd about the ICM poll is that any major party has polled 39%. Coming on the back of the recent trend showing a shift towards Labour this surely has to be seen as a very strange outlier

Looks like the Lib Dems have sown up the prize (if one is on offer) for worst pun of the campaign.

From the Guardian live blog, re: Umuna and Balls appearing to contradict Jim Murphy about whether Labour will continue to make some cuts after 2015/15:

“Now the Scottish Liberal Democrats have responded to “[b]Jim Murphy being Chuka’d under the bus by his colleagues[/b]” (after Ummuna said that “ the leader of the Scottish Labour party will not be in charge of the UK budget” – see 1.30pm), with party President Sir Malcolm Bruce saying: “The left hand of Labour doesn’t know what the other left hand is doing. In their frenzied attempts to try and restore some economic credibility they have only demonstrated their economic incompetence.””

Just eyeballing the recent months polling it seems that ICM have often thrown up odd Tory numbers – usually higher than the other polls conducted around the same time, but, on one occasion at least, also lower. The Labour number seems pretty much with the pack. Looking at last election’s polling ICM was with the pack for the Tories then also. Anyone explanation, clever people?

The really barmy thing about ICM, is that it had the Conservatives on 28 and Labour on 33 in their December poll. That was also blatant nonsense. So we now have two screwy polls in the last 5 months,

If you take the rolling average of the 7 ICM polls since the Indyref (back to October 2014), then Labour are a fraction ahead, which would make this consistent with the normal polling. Of course, the Tory leads are the three most recent polls.

@neil a
“Am I right in thinking ICM’s figures might even get the Tories a tiny majority?”

I think you need a 7%+ Tory lead for an overall majority. So, no. According to an analysis I read, once the Tories get to ~315 seats, it gets difficult to add more. I.e. you need more swing for fewer seat gains past that point.

Newspapers have hundreds of library photos of the leaders from which to choose. If you look at the front page (on the net) of Cameron and Miliband, what would you say was the editor’s intention? Don’t answer that please, I know you are all too intelligent to require interpretation from me and i don’t want to start partisan exchange This is not unusual I might add, for the Grauniad. I don’t know why they do it, but I have been noticing that they are doing it.

Perhaps a general point about presentation is safer ground. Is it possible do we think, that press photo images can operate as dog whistles? I am thinking of, as examples, the endless Hague one of him in the baseball cap and Kinnock falling down on Brighton Beach. I am not suggesting partisan behaviour by editors but is it just a juvenile or brainless need to poke fun of political leaders?

For the last two days you have correctly given the YouGov result a few hours before the official release by quoting the vote share figure – before 8pm – from the top of their “Election Centre” page. Do you (or anyone else) know what time of day that figure is being updated?